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Learning so much with yoga sub

As Ai pointed out in class today, Child's pose is likely the pose that most love. Child's likely has no love/hate relationship, just love. I have to agree.

The 10 a.m. yoga class had a sub. Like most regulars I get used to the same yoga classes with the same instructors. But I am almost always OK with a sub as you learn something new or have a new experience. (Sometimes that is not the case. But at Namaste there has never been a sub I haven’t liked.)

Ai (pronounced I) taught class today. She was awesome. The practice was great. And she gave so many amazing tips while teaching us. I am going to try to remember them to share with you:

Please listen to your body, not your ego.

Move forward with your heart and not your forehead. You don’t want to focus with your mind but your emotion.

We just had winter solstice so our days are longer and our days are shorter, which can affect our minds and bodies.

Our minds are scattered at this time of the year with holidays, parties, stress, etc. so we need to focus on keeping strength in our midline.

There are some poses we have a love/hate relationship with. We feel in the dark with them. But once we are able to “conquer” them we see the light. (Mine is Happy Baby.)

We are scared of some poses, which are reflected in the light/dark. One we practiced today was Crow pose. A great tip Ai gave us was to use a block for your forehead, which made it less scary. Once you feel confident you can lift your forehead off the block.

We really focused on pulling our feet toward the midline to help us keep our focus in yoga and in the real world. We did this in poses such as Pigeon pose, High Lunge, Warrior II, etc.

Many teachers have different philosophies on different poses and practices. I mentioned to Ai that I have an issue (I am not quite sure what it is) where my left shoulder won’t wrap as well as my right shoulder does. (I went to Google and searched for wrapping shoulders yoga and the first image to pop up was from Go Fit Girl! Oh yea!) Ai said she doesn’t believe in wrapping shoulders, which I have heard from some teachers before as well.

Ai’s class was amazing. I think a lot of the students enjoyed the class as we were letting the studio owner know that her class was amazing and they need to have her as a regular teacher.